Lowell's Incident once more, and see how much clearer to you it is. The following are good poems to choose from Burns:My Heart is in the Highlands, John Anderson, My Jo, Auld Lang Syne, Is there for Honest Poverty, A Red, Red Rose, The Cotter's Saturday Night.

RHŒCUS

I. On first reading the poem, you will see that lines 1-35 form a prelude to the old classic tale related in 36-160. It will be best for you to give your attention first to the story part, and come back later to the prelude.

Lowell usually tells his story in such a way as to suggest a moral thought. Read again this "fairy legend of old Greece," to see what practical thought for life Lowell makes it yield you. You will need to give special attention to lines 129-140, where the Dryad tells the youth how he has offended her. Though she says something about his unkindness to her messenger, the bee, the significant line is 137:

We ever ask an undivided love.

Rhocus wasted in foolish pleasure the time he should have given to the Dryad, and he forever lost her. "A lost opportunity is gone forever."

II. Tell the story of Rhocus as you learn it from Lowell. You may use any of his fine diction and figures that linger in your mind after two or three careful readings. Try particularly to use some of the best epithets.

III. Did you ask yourself, when you were studying the story of Rhocus, why a man of the nineteenth century should tell a tale written hundreds of years earlier, especially one about a Dryad, a creature in whose existence we have long ceased to believe? Lowell has anticipated such a ques

tion and has answered it in the prelude to this poem (lines 1-35).

We are prone to think that our time only, our nation alone, knows the truth; what does Lowell say in lines 1-5? Possibly the form of expression each nation and age has used is best fitted to its own development and cast of mind whether the expression be myth, fable, philosophy, or theology. Notice the figure in "realm," "rule." Every religion that has gained followers has had some truth in it (lines 6-12), or earnest men would never, for one moment, have rested in it. Explain the metaphor in "master-key." "Down" (line 11) contains the same metaphor we use when we say "beds of ease." There is a germ of truth in every myth and fable. Explain the metaphor in "reign" (line 15) and "right divine" (line 16), referring to the belief of certain kings in the source of their authority. Lines 18, 19 refer to an old superstition that a hazel-twig will point downward when the person that holds it passes over a subterranean spring. In line 21 Lowell goes back to the figure he began with "germ" (line 9). The "germ" is the principle of life in the seed, the "hull" the outside protection; the story is the hull, the truth it contains is the germ. "Inspirations' (line 26) are artistic expressions - art, poetry, sculpture, etc. The "food" (line 28) comes from the "germ;" the "hull," or mere expression, is the artistic form in which the truth is current among mankind. Explain the figure in line 27.

The figures are so crowded and press so closely on the heels of one another in this prelude that they seem almost confused; but it is not hard for you to see that Lowell tells this story, which we cannot literally believe, because, as he explains, it contains a truth for all time and all men. The story itself is worth telling for its grace and beauty — which

equal the eternal grace and beauty of a Greek sculptured figure.

If one should feel doubtful about the moral teaching of this poem, he should consult the Greek original. The old story lacks the spirituality of Lowell's adaptation, but Rhocus is plainly punished for his neglect of the Dryad, not for his unkindness to the bee. Of course so short a poem could teach only one lesson without losing in unity of effect. Possibly the words that reprove Rhocus for bruising the bee distract the mind from the real fault of the neglectful youth; at least some students have regarded them as teaching the main lesson of the poem. Gentle (eyes) does not here mean "tender," but rather "noble;" and a man of good breeding would never, under any circumstances, fail in the courtesy to women demanded by the conventions of his time and country. And with this poem compare The Hamadryad of Walter Savage Landor.

TO THE DANDELION

I. When we see a bed of dandelions, we are struck, not by the shape of the flowers, but by the mass of warm, rich, golden color. So was the poet Lowell. The color of the flower is the basis of expression in the first, second, third, and sixth stanzas of To the Dandelion; the poet's association of the flower with memories of his childhood is the basis of thought in the fourth and fifth.

II. There is so much figurative language in the poem that the explanation of thought required the analysis of the figures.

Stanza 1. The color of the flower naturally suggests gold. The fact that the flower is found in great beds reminds the poet of the time when the European, especially the Spanish, explorers expected to find gold in unlimited quantities in America. This association of gold in great quantities with the early history of America forms the basis for the meta

phors for this stanza. The children, joyfully picking and exhibiting the blossoms, are "buccaneers," and the dandelion bed is an "Eldorado." Explain the stanza now in detail.

Stanza 2. The gold of the dandelion, however, is not like the gold of Eldorado; it is "harmless." Think of all the evil the Spaniards did to the natives of the New World, and of all they themselves suffered; the gold for which they sought was not harmless. Neither is the gold of the old miser harmless when it tempts a young girl to forsake for him her youthful lover, his rival. The metaphor now changes. Spring scatters dandelions with lavish hand over the earth, as generous knights and ladies of old threw "largess" (gifts of coin) to the common people on festal days. Unfortunately, most persons do not understand the spiritual treasure the common dandelion offers them, and pass it by with eye unblessed; as a peasant might have failed to pick up the largess scattered by the passing nobility beside the road. Go over the stanza again, and explain it in your own words.

Stanza 3. The warm, rich color of the flower suggests luxuriant tropic lands. It rouses in the memory and imagination pictures associated with kinder climates than that of rugged New England; with far off lands, which the poet has visited long ago. It calls up a feeling of luxury like that experienced by the bee in the lily; a luxury like that of Sybaris of old. Follow the thought of the stanza through again, and explain it in your own words. Make clear the comparison of the bee, in metaphor, to the soldiers who conquered Sybaris ("golden-curassed," "tent"), and tell something about the luxury of Sybaris. What is a sybarite?

Stanza 4. The dandelion, by some power of association, calls up in the poet's mind a lovely summer landscape, perhaps a picture of the field in which he, as a child, gathered

the blossoms. Can you sketch the landscape

the trees,

the water, the animals, the light and shade, the colors? Should any signs of motion be apparent in your picture? Note the beautiful simile in the last line.

Stanza 5. The dandelion is also associated with the poet's other memories of springtime in his childhood. Explain particularly "untainted" and "peers."

Stanza 6 comes back to the color metaphor in "gold" and "prodigal." The moral thought attaches itself to the notion of commonness. Through the profit he gets from his tenderness for this common flower, so rich in power to touch the heart and the imagination, the poet learns to feel more reverence for all human beings. Many of them seem commonplace when he meets them carelessly, but all of them, if he gives them the love due from him to every fellow-mortal, reflect to him something of the divine, as every dandelion seems to reflect the sun. Human hearts are the "living pages of God's book;" see II Corinthians 3:2.

III. Study the adjectives and epithets used in the poem. Are these as strong as its figures in beauty and suggestiveness? IV. Study the meter, the line, the stanza, and the rimeplan. What devices do you find for securing melody and harmony? Give special attention here to the fourth stanza. V. Read the poem aloud.

THE NIGHTINGALE IN THE STUDY

I. "The Nightingale in the Study was written when he sought in illness for something that would seclude him from himself." Scudder I, 269.

I have not felt in the mood to do much during my imprisonment. One little poem I have written The Nightingale in the Study. It is about Calderon, and I am inclined to think it pretty. 'Tis a dialogue